Horatio
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: Where does loyalty draw the line? Junpei/Minako friendship. Inspired by Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
1. Act One

**Author's Note: **Since, this week, I am spending every night in tech rehearsals for my long-anticipated production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," I thought I'd write a couple of short stories inspired by the themes and characters of "Hamlet." They won't be long, only a few chapters each, but at least they'll give me something to do while I'm waiting in the wings for my entrances. I come on pretty infrequently, so I have a lot of down time to spend with my notebook.

This one is a Junpei/Minako friendship piece, inspired by my favorite Hamlet character, named Horatio. You can probably read this as a prequel to **What Cannot Be Broken**, although it can certainly also be read as a standalone. Whichever strikes your fancy.

**Horatio**

**Act One**

Junpei Iori was on his way to be late to homeroom when he noticed the heap of disarranged papers littering the floor of the school hallway. Just a few steps in front of him, crouching on the ground in the midst of the academic carnage was that new girl, the cute one with the ponytail and weirdly cool red eyes. What, he asked himself, was her name again Minoru? Midori? No, that's right, it was Minako, Minako Arisato. She was living in the Iwatodai dorm with Yukari and Mitsuru-senpai. Junpei had been pretty impressed when she'd walked in that door on the first day. Not only was she easy on the eyes, but there was something about her, something mysterious in a badass way that seemed to come off of her like some kind of crazy aura. She was the kind of person you felt like you wanted to get to know, right off the bat, even if you did have to face the downside of hanging out with Yuka-tan in order to do it.

At the moment, though, Minako didn't look cool at all. Actually she looked like she was about to have a breakdown, and Junpei figured that the panicky expression on her face probably had something to do with the fact that her school supplies were doing a pretty good job of coating at least five floor tiles. He winced. Man, there was no way he was gonna make it to class on time now.

"Sup," said Junpei, kneeling down beside Minako to help her gather up her school things.

She looked at him like she didn't recognize him at first. That, thought Junpei with a little inward sigh, wasn't unusual. This was a big school, and for all of his confident swagger he didn't stand out too much, and even he knew it. Still, it hadn't been long since they'd first met. Hadn't that only been yesterday?.

"Oh, um…thank you," mumbled Minako, as Junpei haphazardly shoved books back into her bag. "You're Iori-san, right?"

"Whoa, what's with that attitude? You don't have to be so polite. Dude, we're in the same class." He laughed, a little nervously, unused to being treated with that kind of formal respect. "It's just Junpei, okay?"

Minako smiled, and it was so sudden and sunny that it lit up the whole scene for just a second. Junpei found himself grinning sort of stupidly back at her. Clearing his throat, he made a big show out of picking up a pencil that had rolled just a little bit too far away for Minako to reach.

"I really appreciate it," she told him, pushing herself back on to her feet. "I don't know what I tripped on…maybe my own two feet." She laughed, a little bit sheepishly, and then reached one hand down to help Junpei back up again.

He took her hand, and for a moment they stood there in contact as she hoisted her backpack up over her shoulders and gave him another of her sweet little smiles. Then she was off again towards the classroom, and it took Junpei several startled moments before it occurred to him that he, too, had places to be before he got busted for too much tardiness this month.

He followed her into the classroom, watched her take a seat, and then slumped down into his own. Yukari was already there, which Junpei thought was kind of weird. Hadn't those two come to school together, just like yesterday? Maybe Minako had gotten lost going to the bathroom or something, and that'd been how she'd gotten caught out in the hall on her own. Junpei made a mental note to offer to show her around the school a little later, or to at least walk her back and forth between the classroom and the bathrooms. Knowing how to get to the john in an emergency was probably one of the most important things about figuring out a new school, he reasoned to himself.

For some reason, he really wanted to see that smile again, and that feeling didn't stem from the same place that those kinds of things usually did. Sure, she was cute, even hot, if you looked at it from the right angle, but it wasn't like he was falling for her, or anything. It was just that he liked the way she'd thanked him, and the grateful look that he'd gotten to see on the face of a girl who everybody already thought was so cool and out there. She was the new kid in school, the mysterious one, the one that everybody wanted to get to know, and Junpei had managed to do her a favor. Heck, a few more moments like that and he'd be fashioning himself into some kind of homeroom hero.

"Eww, Stupei," hissed Yukari. Junpei looked up to find her glaring at him. "Quit staring at Minako like that, you creep. She's out of your league anyway. Not that I can think of anyone who isn't…"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Junpei wasn't sure if he should be indignant or embarrassed, and in the end he settled for both at the same time. "I wasn't staring, I'm just, uh…you know, thinking."

"Thinking," echoed Yukari doubtfully.

"Yeah," agreed Junpei, "Thinking. Sometimes a man's just got things on his mind, you know? Anyway, who knows? Maybe she'd kinda like it if I stared at her a little bit."

Aware that Minako was probably listening, he flashed her a debonair, winning smile, and watched as she snorted a laugh into her hand. Oh well, he thought. Not the reaction he'd been hoping for, but at least he'd made her laugh. That had to count for something, right?

"Quiet down, class," said Ms. Toriumi, stepping briskly to the front of the room. Instantly, Yukari snapped to attention. The rest of the class mostly did likewise.

Just as Junpei was preparing to happily zone out for the rest of the morning lecture, he caught a glimpse of Minako out of the corner of her eye.

Was it just his imagination, he wondered, or did she just give him a knowing little smirk? There was something about that momentary look that made him suddenly feel like they'd known each other all of their lives, even though they'd never set eyes on each other until the day before.

He grinned back, and then settled back into his seat, feeling strangely light and careless as Ms. Toriumi's voice began to lull him into a pleasantly disinterested stupor.


	2. Act Two

**Act Two**

A couple of months later, Junpei, Minako, and Yukari were exploring Tartarus together, while Mitsuru kept tabs on them from outside the tower. Junpei wasn't sure he'd ever get used to the feeling of having Mitsuru-senpai's clipped, curt little well-bred voice echoing around inside his brain. Sure, it was great to have the support, but…it was creepy. Even though he knew, rationally, that it wasn't the case, he couldn't help wondering sometimes if maybe she could hear his thoughts while she was bouncing around in there. There were definitely a few things about his mind that he didn't want Mitsuru-senpai or any of the others to know. Well, he corrected himself, okay, maybe more than a few things.

Minako, who was still, much to Junpei's chagrin, acting as their fearless leader, had ordered them all to split up and to run around gathering intel and loot separately for a few minutes. Junpei kinda liked it when she did that, because it gave him the chance to hone his persona fighting skills. Junpei Iori, he thought, the lone freedom fighter, rushing from harrowing battle to harrowing battle with nothing but steel in his hand and steel in his heart. It sounded cool in his head, and he grinned as he listened for the sounds of the shadows and/or his friends making their way through the midnight hour.

Then, suddenly, he did hear something, and it sounded a lot like the sound of some girl sobbing herself silly. Turning the corner, he expected to find Yukari with a broken nail or something, and was totally shocked to see Minako herself, their very own commander-in-chief hunched over on the ground and sniffling like a kid with a lost puppy.

"Uh, hey," he mumbled.

"Oh…" Minako glanced up and winced, apparently not having heard him approach. "Junpei…I'm sorry. It's nothing, just…just pretend you didn't see this, okay?"

"Right, well…I can't really do that," muttered Junpei. "I mean, you're a girl, and you're crying, and…uh, there's totally something I'm supposed to say here, right? I'm not so good at that kinda thing…" He trailed off, watching a tear track its way down Minako's left cheek just under her eye.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "This is really embarrassing."

"Yeah, tell me about it," muttered Junpei.

For some reason, that made Minako laugh. It wasn't a really ecstatic laugh or anything…more like a miserable little chuckle, actually, but either way, it was definitely a laugh, and that was a step in the right direction. Junpei tried grinning at her, and she hazarded a little smile back.

"So, you wanna tell me about it?" he asked. That had the potential to open a huge, dangerous can of emotional worms, but somehow he didn't feel like he could just walk away from this one. Maybe it was the fact that she'd laughed at him. He liked that. She found something about him funny, and that was more than could be said for a lot of the other people in Junpei's life.

She didn't tell him about it. Instead, she asked him a question.

"Junpei," she asked, meeting his eyes and biting her lip. "Do you ever get scared?"

"Scared?" asked Junpei, taken aback. "Uh, scared of what? You mean, scared of the shadows?"

Minako shook her head. "No, that's not quite it. I meant, do you ever get scared for the others? For Yukari, and for Mitsuru-senpai, and…"

She trailed off, and Junpei waited expectantly for her to clarify.

Minako sighed. "I'm worried that I'll let everyone down," she admitted finally. "I'm terrified that we'll be in here, and I'll make the wrong call, and someone will get hurt. Yukari's not used to fighting yet, and…and neither am I. I've never dealt with anything like this before. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a leader."

Junpei had to agree with her on that one, although even he had the common sense not to say it out loud. She was, after all, a girl, and a pretty small girl at that. She was a few months younger than him, too, and even if she did seem to have a talent for the persona thing, what would happen if something big and bad came along and overpowered her? She'd never have been able to hold her own in a schoolyard fight and even with the shadows things sometimes ended up getting physical. No, he thought, he really wasn't sure why Mitsuru-senpai and Akihiko-senpai thought she was such a great choice for a leader.

Still, he had to hand it to her. She had people skills, and even his stoic and heroic heart was just a tiny bit touched by the way the tears kept squeezing out of those big eyes of hers. She was a nice girl. She cared about people. He liked that about her.

"Nah, I wouldn't worry about it," he told her, leaning nonchalantly against the nearby wall as though to emphasize how totally relaxed he felt about the whole thing.

Minako blinked. "Really?" she asked.

"Course," mumbled Junpei, puffing himself up to look his most impressive. "I mean, hey, I've got your back, right? So, what's there to worry about?"

Again, Minako laughed. "You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"

Junpei rolled his eyes. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with having a healthy sense of my own strengths and weaknesses," he insisted.

"Okay, so," insisted Minako, "what are some of the weaknesses?"

For just a fleeting moment, Junpei almost let himself say that she was one of those weaknesses. Instead, he shrugged. "Uh…sometimes I eat too much?"

Still smiling, Minako wiped the back of one hand across her eyes, dashing several tears away in the process. "You're kinda full of yourself," she said, although she didn't sound like she meant to chide him. "Haven't you ever wondered if-!"

She didn't have a chance to finish her sentence. At that exact moment, a huge shadow leapt out of the murky hall behind her. Junpei saw it coming before Minako had even finished speaking, and he lunged at it, his evoker poised against his ear and ready to fire.

"Agi!" he shouted, and the shadow erupted into a column of flame, just inches away from slashing a set of wicked looking claws across the back of Minako's head.

"What…?" she gasped, jumping to her feet. As the flames began to die away, the shadow slowly crawled up to face them again, and this time, Minako was ready.

"Zio!" she hissed, and this time the shadow was hit with a bolt of lightning that again knocked it senseless to the ground. Minako hurled herself forward with her naginata drawn, and Junpei was quick to follow suit. Before too long, they'd ended that shadow for good, and watched it disappear into a cloud of red and black shadow essence which drifted away on the currents in the air.

"Junpei," murmured Minako. "Thank you. I'd never have seen it coming in time, without you."

Junpei grinned at her. "See what I mean?" he said triumphantly. "I got your back! So, there's nothing to worry about, right? You just leave everything to your old pal Junpei. I'll see you through. Come on, let's go find the others."

They walked off back in the direction that they'd first come from, hoping to intercept Yukari on the way.

"You know," muttered Junpei as they walked, "that lightning thing back there was pretty cool."

"You weren't so bad yourself," replied Minako. "What do you think is more potent? Lightning, or fire?"

Junpei just shook his head at her. "Tch," he said. "Fire, obviously. I mean, you can burn pretty much anything, and whole freaking forests have burned down because of fires, too. You saw the way it ate up the shadow back there too, right? So…"

"Are you sure?" interrupted Minako. "Because lightning strikes, statistically, kill more people than wildfires do."

"No way," said Junpei. "There is no way that's an actual thing. Seriously, where did you hear that? In a book? You're always reading those damn books…"

They argued the point all the way to the exit.


	3. Act Three

**Act Three**

"Hey, Mina-tan," asked Junpei. "What do you think of Shinjiro-senpai?"

They were sitting together at a little table in the back of Hagakure Ramen, and Minako's mouth was already stuffed full of food. Junpei watched with a grin while Minako tried to negotiate enough of the ramen down the tubes so that she could have her mouth free to answer his question.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "What am I supposed to think about him?"

"Uh, well, I dunno." Junpei shifted awkwardly in his chair. "It's just that, some of the guys at school were talking about how the two of you are spending all this time together, lately, and…"

Minako was watching him warily. "And what?" she asked.

"And," insisted Junpei, with a sigh, "Like, I told them they were just imagining it, and that there's nothing going on between the two of you, but…"

Minako didn't say anything. She just sat there with a noodle hanging out of her mouth, staring intently down at the tips of two of her fingertips.

"Well, is there?" finished Junpei lamely.

Minako seemed to have to think about that for a moment. Finishing the noodle she had in her mouth, she played with another noodle between her chopsticks, flopping it idly back and forth as though it was the most engrossing and focused task in the whole damn world.

"Why does it matter?" she asked finally.

Junpei sucked in a long, slow breath. He'd had a feeling it would come to something like this. It hadn't been just the rumors, either, that had got him thinking about the whole Minako and Shinjiro thing. He'd seen them alone together a ton of times over the past week, hanging out in the dorm, or talking together on the front step in hushed, intimate voices. He didn't like it, and that was strange, because he really did genuinely like Shinjiro-senpai. The guy was a beast. Okay, Junpei wouldn't have wanted to get on his bad side, but he was a hell of a lot of help in a fight, and Akihiko-senpai trusted him, which was more than enough for Junpei and everyone else, too. No, he decided, his misgivings didn't have anything to do with all of that stuff. Shinjiro-san was a great guy. He was one of them, one of SEES, a comrade in arms.

"It's just," muttered Junpei, "that I've kinda got this bad feeling about the guy. Like, he'd be bad news for you, or something. Look, I know it's crazy, okay, but take it from another guy, I just don't think he's the kind that would be really good to a girl."

Minako stopped eating. She stopped staring at her fingers. Instead, she stared open-mouthed at Junpei.

"Shinji's not like that," she informed him hotly.

Oh, great, thought Junpei. Now she's calling him Shinji. Here we go. "Hey, that's not what I meant," he said quickly. "I just feel like he wouldn't know what to do with a girl."

"Oh, and you do?" retorted Minako.

"Who, me? This doesn't have anything to do with me!" insisted Junpei defensively.

"You're right," agreed Minako. "It doesn't, so just back off, okay? You don't know him like I do."

That, thought Junpei, was exactly what he was afraid of.

"I just don't want to see you get hurt, okay?" he said, shaking his head and viciously stuffing ramen into his mouth to shut himself up. This wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't even sure why he'd started this conversation. It wasn't like there was anything wrong with Shinjiro, he just reminded Junpei of bad news. The places he hung out, and the way he blew off school…sure, it made him cool, and to be honest, Junpei kind of admired the guy for being so damn casual about the scariest stuff, but…that wasn't the sort of thing that a nice girl like Minako should be getting mixed up in. At least, that's what Junpei was sure he should have been saying.

Minako, however, wasn't having any of it. She had this terrible look of injured female dignity on her face as she informed him, "I'm not a little kid, Junpei. I know what I'm doing. I know who my friends are. I can take care of myself."

"Jeez," muttered Junpei. "Are we really gonna do this? Are you really gonna start the whole 'I am woman, hear me roar' thing again? Cause, trust me, you got your point across the last ten or twelve times, okay?"

Minako bit her lip angrily again. "Obviously not," she said. "If I had, maybe you wouldn't be trying to tell me how to live my life."

"I'm not telling you how to live anybody's goddamn life," shouted Junpei. "I'm just freaking worried about you, okay?"

"You don't have to worry about me," muttered Minako.

"Oh yeah?" Junpei was on a roll, now. He was having a hard time stopping the words from piling out. "Well, then who the hell's gonna do it? Cause you're sure not doing it. You spend all your damn time worrying about everybody else. Somebody's gotta make sure you're looking after number one. Somebody's gonna make sure you don't go out there and get yourself killed!"

He stopped, realizing what he'd said. Minako must have realized it too, because she went silent for a long moment.

"This isn't about Shinjiro, is it?" she asked eventually.

Junpei let out an exasperated breath. His head hurt. He rubbed it irritably with one finger, suddenly unwilling to meet her eyes.

"Nah," he admitted. "I guess it's not. I guess it's about everything else."

It had all started a few weeks before, when Junpei had watched Minako get mown down by a rampaging shadow on its way through her towards Akihiko-san. She'd been trampled right over, had sustained tons of injuries, and had insisted on getting up and walking her way home again so that she could rest up to fight the very next day. She was exhausted all the time, with huge circles under her eyes, and any time that she wasn't actively taking classes, she was talking about fighting, or thinking about fighting, or holed up in some corner with Shinjiro, whispering and plotting and planning the next move in the stupid anti-shadow game.

Sure, it had all been fun, once. Sometimes, it still was. Sometimes Junpei still got that incredible rush from getting to use his persona and fight alongside his friends. He was saving the world when nobody else had the guts. He was somebody special.

The trouble was, sometimes he started to worry that he was only somebody special because of Minako. Without her to cheer him on, maybe the special would go away, and he'd just be some sad sack of shit with a sword and a hell of a lot of rage.

She gave him a purpose. She was a motivator. She was the one he wanted to impress. Without her to fight for him and with him, he wasn't sure he'd be fighting at all. That was a scary thought. It was scary to think that somebody else had that much power over something that he'd been so sure for so long came entirely from inside of who he really was.

"Junpei," murmured Minako. He looked up at her, and her eyes had softened. She was worried about him again, he realized with a grimace. That hadn't been the point of all of this. Why couldn't she just try to understand?

"I'm not in danger," she assured him. "I can't be. You've got my back, remember?"

She reached out and rested her hand on his. Junpei looked away from her.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, you know it. Of course I do."


	4. Act Four

**Act Four**

At midnight, on the night before Christmas, Junpei went for a walk. He didn't have any plans, or any particular goal as to where he was going, but the events of the past few days…no, of the past few weeks, or even months were making his head spin, and he needed some air and a chance to catch his breath.

Everything was spiraling out of control so quickly, and the world that had been his boring, mundane slice of reality had turned into a sinister sack of foreboding and misery in such a short time. The game wasn't fun anymore, and the heroics were now all for show. He felt like the walls were closing in around him and that it was too late to scramble for a way out.

Lost in his own depressing reverie, he almost smacked right into Minako on his way into the dorm.

"Eek!" said Minako, coming to a full stop just short of plowing straight through him. "Junpei! Um…what are you doing out so late?"

Junpei just shrugged. "Nothing," he mumbled. "I mean, it's Christmas, so I, uh…figured I'd go out, and um…"

They stared at each other for a long moment.

"Hey, wait a second, didn't you have plans with Akihiko-senpai tonight?" asked Junpei, remembering some conversation he'd overheard between Yukari and Fuuka when he'd gotten up that morning. "Some big Christmas date or whatever?"

Minako flushed slightly. "I did," she said, and Junpei couldn't help but grin at the why the corners of her mouth turned up in just the hint of a sheepishly lovesick smile. "I just stepped out for a minute after he…ah, after he decided to call it a night."

"Ugh, too much information," muttered Junpei. "Jeez, being single sucks, man…I gotta listen to everybody else's date stories all the time, and now I've got those nasty images in my head of you and Senpai.."

Minako smacked him playfully on the shoulder. "Don't be a pervert," she told him, but there was laughter in her voice as she said it. "The fact that you act that way is probably the reason you can't get a girlfriend."

Thinking suddenly about Chidori, Junpei's heart sank. "Nah, he muttered. "That's…that's not it, really."

Minako must have read his thoughts from the suddenly closed and miserable look on his face, because she gave his shoulder a quick, comforting squeeze in the same place that she'd smacked at it a moment before.

"Junpei," murmured Minako.

Junpei steeled himself for her sympathy, or worse, for her pity. He didn't want either of those things. Chidori's death still haunted most of his nights alone, and seeing Minako look at him with hat totally disconnected, pathetic sorrow in her eyes would only make the whole thing feel fresh and horrible all over again.

Moments later, Junpei realized that he should have known better. This was Minako he was talking to, after all.

Instead of some sort of monotonously comforting litany, Minako said, "Hey, I have an idea. Do you want to go walk around and look at the Christmas lights? Everyone's trees are up all over town, and it makes the whole island sparkle! Let's go look, okay? Please?"

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down the sidewalk, to the sounds of off-key carolers warbling their Christmas tunes all up and down the main roads. Minako had been right, Junpei thought. Each house and building was decked out in shiny finery, looking festive and cheery, as though there was all the time in the world to be happy.

Of course, he reminded himself, as far as everyone else knew, there was all the time in the world. No one but him and his friends were aware of the impending doom of Nyx, or the fact that the world was beginning to shut down on them and prepare for the inevitable end of everything that was magical, beautiful, and worth celebrating.

"Damnit," he muttered. "Merry fucking Christmas."

"Yes," agreed Minako, in a strange, faraway sort of voice. "It is, isn't it?"

Junpei just stared at her, not quite sure what it was that she was agreeing with. Apparently startled by his silence, Minako looked up at him and raised one eyebrow in surprise.

"Uh," said Junpei. "Wait, what is?"

"It is a Merry Christmas," clarified Minako.

For some reason, that made Junpei angry. He could feel the righteous rage rising up in the middle of his soul as a protest against something that lay in the glitter of the Christmas lights, or in the annoyingly miraculous and undaunted way that Minako smiled.

"I don't get you," he told her bitterly."This year…this has been the worst year of my life. We've lost everything…even people, even people we were just started to really know, and…" He fumbled for the right words, not in the habit of making pithy speeches.

"But before we lost them," interjected Minako smoothly, "We had to find them. This has been the worst year of our lives because it could have been the best year of our lives. We made so many wonderful new beginnings, and met so many people that changed us…that's why it hurts, don't you see? It hurts because we loved so much about this year. That in itself is worth celebrating."

"But what about them?" asked Junpei, his voice sounding stupid and childish in his own ears as he fought back tears that were now suddenly threatening to squeeze out from under his stoically manly eyelids. "What do they get out of all this? It's too late, now, for them. None of it means anything for them anymore."

Minako shook her head. "No," she murmured, "I don't think so. I like to think that the people we leave behind are always watching and waiting for us to be happy. That's what they want, from wherever they go. They want us to have the things that they would have given us if we'd all still been together. That's what Shinji wants, I know it, and that's what Chidori wants. That's what I would want, too, if I was…"

She stopped, suddenly, and bit her lip.

"Anyway," she murmured. "We have to be happy for them, too."

"Yeah, well, sorry if I'm not happy enough, or nothing, but it's a little too shitty and lonely out here for me to just grin and bear it like you do." muttered Junpei rebelliously.

Minako took a step closer to him, and reached out to squeeze his hand. On a whim, Junpei put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him, where she could lean her head against his shoulder. Normally, that kind of close contact with a girl shaped like Minako would have made his heart start pounding, and his head start doing crazy calculations, but this time, it wasn't like that He didn't want her, and he didn't fantasize about her. Instead, the pressure of her hand and the way her hair brushed down and tickled the skin of neck below his shirt collar just made him feel safe, in quiet, confident sort of way that he couldn't remember having ever felt safe before.

"You shouldn't be lonely," murmured Minako. "After all, I'm here with you."


	5. Act Five

**Act Five**

Junpei's heart was pumping in an uncomfortably unsteady rhythm, almost keeping time with his frantic footfalls as he forced himself as fast as he could up the stairs from the school building on to the roof.

How the hell did he forget?

Just minutes ago, in a flood of almost nauseating clarity, everything about SEES, the shadows, and the end of the world had come rushing back through his head, leaving him staggered, puzzled, and angrier with himself than he had ever been before. It had meant so much to him, to all of them. They'd all meant so much to him. He'd had a reason for living, a purpose for pushing forward, a secret truth that no one else had known and that been his to protect and to preserve.

So, how the hell could he forget?

Graduation day…there almost hadn't even been a graduation day. That wasn't the kind of thing you were supposed to just forget. He should have been proud, he should have been ecstatic, he should have been a hero, but…

There was a miserable feeling in the pit of Junpei's stomach that he didn't understand. Something was wrong, something had always been wrong, and he was just too damn stupid and forgetful to figure out what it was. There was something he knew, or expected, or suspected that he couldn't get back, and it was killing him trying to figure out what awful thing was supposed to happen next that his subconscious was afraid to remind him about.

Minako, he thought, he would know. He'd find Minako, because she'd tell him what was going on, she'd talk through those memories with him and together they'd sort out what the hell had really happened, what was fact and what was fictional, what was bravado and what was the truth. Just thinking about Minako made him feel a little less harried and insane. She'd always been his anchor, and she'd forgive him for forgetting. She always did. She was like a fucking saint, the way she forgave him for every obnoxious thing he did and every horrible thing he said to her in fear, or anger, or whatever. Minako would make everything all right, and then they'd laugh about it and she'd make fun of him for getting old, and he'd say he was just more mature, or something, and they'd…

Junpei's thoughts were interrupted by the sight that met him as he finally stepped out on the Gekkoukan High School roof. The others were already all there, standing around, stock-still in the accusing sunlight.

They were so still that it was scary, and…and someone was crying.

"Aigis?" muttered Junpei, seriously freaked out. "Wait, what the hell…?"

Aigis, crouching on the ground, looked up and shifted slightly as she heard Junpei call her name. When she moved, he saw it, and the bottom dropped out of his heart like a lead weight, so fast he spent seconds not breathing.

"No way," he whispered. "No fucking way...No…"

The next few moments were blurry and indistinct. Junpei was vaguely aware that he was pushing people aside, that he was bumping into bodies without giving a shit, his eyes fixed on the horrible, motionless lump of Minako sprawled out on the concrete ground.

"Mina-tan," he gasped. "Hey…Hey, Minako! Wake up! Yo, I'm talking to you!"

"She's…" began Aigis tearfully.

"Shut up." Junpei shook his head fiercely, refusing to hear it. "You shut up, she's gonna be fine. Right, Mina-tan? You're gonna be fine. Hey, answer me! What the hell kind of a time is this to sleep? Its fucking graduation, we've got things to do and people to see! Hey, come on!"

As he his demands got more and more desperate, and his voice started to waver and crack under the pain of realization, Junpei could hear voices in his head, moments of memory that were choosing this terribly ironic moment to come creeping back.

_Hey, I've got your back,_ he heard himself say. _So, there's nothing to worry about, right? _

Hot tears started blurring reality, blocking out the faces of Aigis and the others as they peered down at him and Minako, looking miserable, sympathetic, useless and infuriating. Instead, all he could see now was in his mind's eye, visions of things that he hated himself for and wished he could do over and take back.

_I know what I'm doing_, Minako was saying angrily, her eyes flashing as she rejected Junpei's attempts to tell her how worried he was. _I know who my friends are. I can take care of myself. _

Junpei wondered to himself if she ever had really known who her friends were. He wasn't sure he knew. A real friend would have held her back, would have said no, would have insisted that she listen and stay somewhere safe, out of harm's way, no matter what that ended up meaning. A real friend wouldn't have let her talk him into the idea that everything would be okay if he just went along for the ride. A real friend wouldn't have been blinded by the idea of being a hero. A real friend would have…

_I'm not in danger_, he heard Minako say. _I can't be. You've got my back, remember?_

He groaned, and it came out more like a strangled animal noise, something that hadn't come from him, but from the depths of something tortured deep inside. She'd trusted him, she'd relied on him, she'd believed in him, and he'd let her talk him into the end. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be, he wasn't supposed to have let her go.

"Junpei," whispered Yukari, her fingers brushing hesitantly against his shoulder.

Furiously, he shook her off. "Get the hell away from me," he bit out. She stepped back, and Junpei found himself twining his fingers through the hair of lifeless Minako, wanting to push her or shake her back to her senses, the way he knew he should have done long ago.

_That's why it hurts_, said Minako's voice in Junpei's ears. _It hurts because we loved so much. _

It was then that Junpei realized, for the first time, what love really was. He'd never known it before, never really understood it, and even that realization was a new one for him as he dripped stupid salty tears down on to the girl who'd changed his life for better and for worse in the same few months. Love wasn't about looking forward to seeing someone after class, or thinking about them at all the wrong times in bed at night. Love had nothing to do with wanting other people to be happy, and was more than just feeling lonely when that person wasn't in your life.

Love was forcing yourself to hurt someone to keep her from hurting herself. Love meant not being able to see the bigger picture, and being willing to let the rest of the universe go to hell on a fast train without blinking an eye or shedding a tear, if that meant that she'd have another moment to smile, or laugh, or just be. Love didn't belong the heroes; it belonged to the human beings, the people who cared more about each other than about saving the world or the greater good.

Junpei loved in a violent, tearing, desperate way that there wasn't any time for, now. It was too late. It was over.

**Author's Note: **And so, three years later, **What Cannot Be Broken** begins. Thanks for reading my short, experimental Junpei story. I hope that if you enjoyed it, you'll come and read the rest of my Junpei and Minako friendship stuff. There are some powerful moments coming up between the two of them at the end of **Messiah**, which isn't too far away, and I sincerely hope to see you there. Thanks so much!


End file.
